Destination - Akai MPC Series

History
The MPC has a long history before it was even Akai's instrument. Invented by Roger Linn of LinnDrum fame for Akai, it was a successor of the ill-fated Linn9000. It was a sampler in every form, but made to be a drum machine. It's the precursor of every groove box made today. The first MPC was the MPC-60, then it was improved to the MPC-3000. Then the MPC-2000 came out, then the MPC-2000XL.

The current model is the MPC-1000, a pint-sized drum machine that works off memory cards for storage.

(The MPC-4000 is really more like the S-5000 series in the form of a drum machine, so we are not counting it here. Click here to go to the S-5000 page, which covers the MPC-4000.)

Architecture Description
A Program is the single Instrument unit on the MPC. It hold a group of sounds assigned to Pads. Up to 4 Programs can be played at one time on the MPC, giving it a 4 Layer capability. You have nominal parameters, such as volume, filter, and a small envelope.

Disk and File Formats
All the MPC's write to DOS disk format, although they use a proprietary partition scheme that we'd rather not talk about. A Program is saved as a .pgm file.

Samples used to use the special .snd format, but since the MPC-2000XL they now use .wav files. Earlier MPC's could load .wav files but not save them.